The Undertaker went “old school” for his favorite horror movie of all time. With “The Escape The Undertaker” interactive film debuting on Netflix for this Halloween, “The Deadman” was making the media rounds and spoke with Denny Directo of Entertainment Tonight. Nearing the end of the conversation, Directo did some Halloween “rapid fire” with Taker and one included his favorite scary flick.
“The Birds, Alfred Hitchcock,” Undertaker said emphatically. “Old school stuff. The thing was always with the ‘scare,” but you know it all got into slash and gore and all that which I think always kind of took away, eventually, took away from the scariness. Hitchcock, he always left it with the theater of the mind. Like he left you to think. Like, ‘What happened in PSYCHO?’ I always thought that was definitely your mind, what you think in your mind is far scarier than any special effect they can do. It’s kind of old school, but what else would you expect from The Undertaker?”
Old school indeed. The 1963 film by Hitchcock had a legendary cast consisting of Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren, and Jessica Tandy (of Fried Green Tomatoes fame). In a fun trivia fact that makes Undertaker’s movie choice even more ironically fascinating, the cast of The Birds actually had to shoot in an alleged legitimate haunted house. Details from IMDB are below:
“The schoolhouse in Bodega, California has also been known to be haunted, even back during filming. According to Tippi Hedren, the entire cast was spooked to be there. She also mentioned how she had the feeling while there that ‘the building was immensely populated, but there was nobody there.’ When Alfred Hitchcock was told about the schoolhouse being haunted, according to Hedren, he was even more encouraged to film there.”
WrestleZone recently spoke with Escape The Undertaker director Ben Simms about working with the WWE legend and how he aimed to add to the story while also staying true to The Phenom’s roots.
“As far as it goes with The Undertaker, I know that he’s had a very long and rich history, the biggest thing I wanted to do was bring something new to the WWE or perhaps or show him in a different light that he hasn’t been seen,” Simms explained, “but at the same time have that balancing act of making sure that I’m true to the lore and history that he has as a character already. It sounds like [based on feedback] hopefully, I got close with that, and if there’s a new take on him or a new side that’s what we built with this but it still has some of his authenticity.”
You can watch our full interview and learn more about the new film, available now on Netflix, at this link.
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Transcription credit should go to @DominicDeAngelo of WrestleZone